Weather entry
Does the COLDEST, WINDIEST, DRYEST, HIGHEST continent live up to its name?
In my opinion, it did not during the two weeks I was there. My first impression when I got off the plane, was wow, Antarctica is pretty warm. Mind you, I was there in the dead of summer, but on average, the daily temperature was -1 oC, getting up to plus 5 oC. The lowest temperature outside was -8 oC. The lowest temperature inside, was -20 oC in the freezer, in which was the coldest half hour I experienced in Antarctica while packing up frozen food for the camp. The wind picked up for an evening or two but was never near gale forces. In fact, the highest I recorded was 4.0 m/s…..pitiful for the WINDIEST continent. With the wind the temperature was brought down to -15.2 oC. As for the driest, there was a great success as we saw no precipitation. Living on the Ross Ice Shelf we were not far off sea level. However, Mount Erebus was looming over us all the time and he lies at 3,794 meters tall. Antarctica’s average height comes out at 2,300m with its highest peak in the Transantarctic Mountains being 5,140m. That reputation was definitely lived up to.
hanging out at the weather station
When we stayed at Scott Base there was an automatic weather machine that calculated the wind chill for us while we watched on drinking hot cups of tea inside. It was feasable to not know the weather till after breakfast. That was impossible out in the field. You knew it was cold by the metal power it took to get out of your warm sleeping bag and put on frozen boots. Poking your heard out of the tent after spending half an hour putting on warm clothes was like a slap in the face. Bright sun blinded you and the wind jumped on any exposed flesh. Then it was off to take the regular weather readings. The students all took turns at the weather station at 7:30am and 6pm taking readings with handheld Kestrals. Me being me, I was there every reading becoming the resident meteorologist. I even had better attendance than the tutors (they did have legit reasons for being absent though I will say). It was very interesting to see the different trends. We checked temperature, wind chill, wind direction and speed, humidity, barometric pressure, dew point, wet bulb, cloud cover, movement and type. Then finally a reading on the subject temperature scale established by how long one could stand to be without a glove. By the end I could do all this half asleep (which I practically was before my cup of tea).
The biggest issue with the weather was the sun. The relentless 24 hours of sunlight being reflected off the snow onto your face led me to have sunburn up my nose. I hope you never have to know how much fun that is. I put on spf 70 several times a day and still my face was so raw by the end of only 10 days. At night I applied moisturizer if I didn’t collapse straight away into my sleeping bag. Inside the tent was the limited escape that could be offered. I have no idea how the explorers managed. I can only assume one becomes calloused to these things. Next to never would I go out without my snow goggles on, one couldn’t see without them. Snow blindness was a real danger.
My sanctuary
Well we were fortunate to strike some wonderful weather I could see how things could have easily gotten bad. The slightest bit of wind brought the temperature down drastically. When the clouds covered the sun, there moral of the group lowered. Touching metal sucked the heat out of your fingertips. Fumbling with pots of boiling water while wearing bulky gloves was always a bit dicey (we did in fact have one girl burn both hands while pouring the water). There were times that dark clouds threatened us, but they never made their way in to our protected cove. Looking back, I am so thankful for this as I have no idea how we would have accomplished our work in worse conditions.